Best Buy Hands Out Cease & Desist Letters for Christmas

arrenlex writes "Improv Everywhere, a NY-based comedy group, was served a Cease & Desist notice by Best Buy for selling 'improv everywhere' shirts modeled after the blue Best Buy uniform. But that's not the interesting part. From the blog post: 'Here's where the story gets interesting. Today, Best Buy sent a C&D to our friend Scott Beale over at laughingsquid.com threatening legal action unless he removes the blog post referencing our shirts! They're threatening to sue someone for just covering the news story of the shirts!'"

Comments

Fuck Them

[MistaE]

No court in a million years would honor a C&D sent to a news site covering a news story in good faith. This is what Fair Use is all about, regardless of which Intellectual Property we're talking about.

In fact, this is the kind of shit I want to see taken to court in the hopes that a judge will give punitive damages to the company that abused the C&D.

What is Best Buy thinking?

[log1385]

Honestly, what does Best Buy have to lose if they let someone print shirts that look like their shirts? All they're going to get is bad publicity by asking these guys to C&D. Even worse, they're trying to keep the story off of the internet, which is impossible, as evidenced by the fact that it is here on /.

Why they happen.

[Sneftel]

Costs vs. Benefits of sending a doubtfully valid cease and desist notice:

Costs:
* Postage.
* Paralegal staffing costs (assume 15 minutes to prepare the boilerplate).
* Small chance some guys on Slashdot get grumpy for a while, until the next time there's a sale on DVD-Rs (whereupon all is forgiven, transactionally speaking).

Benefits:
* Decent chance the guy stops doing whatever it is you feel like stopping him from doing.

It's not even a close call. A C&D is a warning shot, an initial skirmish. It doesn't commit them to anything legally, and the public image repercussions are vanishingly low.